Roger Babson
Roger Ward Babson was an American economist, statistician, and entrepreneur who worked across the fields of business theory, writing, and politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Born on July 6, 1875, in Gloucester, Babson was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He went on to build a career that spanned economic analysis, statistical research, and business theory, producing written work in English on these subjects throughout his professional life. He is noted for predicting the Wall Street crash of 1929, a forecast that drew considerable public attention to his methods of economic analysis.
Beyond his work as an analyst and writer, Babson demonstrated a sustained engagement with education through the founding of multiple institutions. He founded Babson College, which continues to operate, as well as Webber College in Babson Park, Florida. He also founded Utopia College in Eureka, Kansas, an institution that has since ceased to operate. His activity as a politician added yet another dimension to a career that already crossed the boundaries of economics, statistics, entrepreneurship, and educational philanthropy. Babson died on March 5, 1967, in Lake Wales, Florida, leaving behind an institutional legacy most concretely represented by the colleges he established and by his publicly recorded prediction of the 1929 market collapse.
Quotes by Roger Babson
There isn’t a plant or a business on earth that couldn’t stand a few improvements-and be better for them. Someone is going to think of them. Why not beat the other fellow to it?
I have not been able to find a single useful institution which has not been founded either by an intensely religious man or by the son of a praying father or a praying mother. I have made the statement before the chambers of commerce of all the largest cities of the country and have asked them to bring forward a case that is an exception to this rule. Thus far, I have not heard of a single one.
If things are not going well with you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering, and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it.
Experience has taught me that there is one chief reason why some people succeed and others fail. The difference is not one of knowing, but of doing. The successful man is not so superior in ability as in action. So far as success can be reduced to a formula, it consists of this: doing what you know you should do.
Only religion can prevent democratic rule from developing into mob rule. A nation can prosper only as its citizens are religious, intelligent, capable of service and eager to render it.
A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.
Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile. Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions.